4th Sunday of Easter 2022 - Holy Mother Church

 Last week after the 11am Mass, we celebrated our annual May Crowning. The statue of Our Lady, here on the side of the sanctuary, was crowned with flowers, to commemorate Blessed Mary as our Queen. She is the queen of the Church, she is the queen of heaven, she is queen of angels.  She is our spiritual queen and she is our spiritual mother. For Our Blessed Lord, at the crucifixion turned to his disciple and said, “behold your mother”. All Christians have Mary as our Spiritual Mother.

And on this Mother’s Day weekend, it is good for us to renew our love for both our biological mothers, the women who reared us and raised us, and also our spiritual mother given to us by Christ the Lord. Today is a perfect day for praying the rosary—offering the roses of our prayers to heaven for our mothers, in honor of our mothers, out of love and gratitude for our mothers.

Throughout the centuries, Christians have also referred to the Church as our Mother. Holy Mother Church. A few years ago, Pope Francis reflected on what that means. And I’m going to quote extensively from the Holy Father here, because his reflections are wonderful. He said, “Among the images that the Second Vatican Council chose to help us understand the nature of the Church better, is that of “mother”: the Church is our mother in faith, in supernatural life. It is one of the images most used by the Fathers of the Church in the first centuries…For me,” the Pope says, “it is one of the most beautiful images of the Church: Mother Church! In what sense and in what way is the Church mother? We start with the human reality of motherhood: what makes a mother?

“First of all,” the Pope says, “a mother generates life, she carries her child in her womb for 9 months and then delivers him to life, giving birth to him. The Church is like this: she bears us in the faith, through the work of the Holy Spirit who makes her fertile, like the Virgin Mary. The Church and the Virgin Mary are mothers, both of them; what is said of the Church can be said also of Our Lady and what is said of Our Lady can also be said of the Church! Certainly faith is a personal act: “I believe”, I personally respond to God who makes himself known and wants to enter into friendship with me . But the faith I receive from others, within a family, within a community that teaches me to say “I believe”, “we believe”. A Christian is not an island! We do not become Christians in a laboratory, we do not become Christians alone and by our own effort, since the faith is a gift, it is a gift from God given to us in the Church and through the Church. 

And the Church gives us the life of faith in Baptism: that is the moment in which she gives birth to us as children of God, the moment she gives us the life of God, she engenders us as a mother would. 

If you go to the Baptistery of St John Lateran, beside the Pope's Cathedral, inside it there is an inscription in Latin which reads more or less: “Here is born a people of divine lineage, generated by the Holy Spirit who makes these waters life-giving; Mother Church gives birth to her children within these waves”. This makes us understand something important: our taking part in the Church is not an exterior or formal fact, it is not filling out a form they give us; it is an interior and vital act; one does not belong to the Church as one belongs to a society, to a party or to any other organization. The bond is vital, like the bond you have with your mother, because, as St Augustine says, “The Church is truly the mother of Christians” Let us ask ourselves: how do I see the Church? As I am grateful to my parents for giving me life, am I grateful to the Church for generating me in the faith through Baptism? 

Do we love the Church as we love our mothers, also taking into account her defects? All mothers have defects, we all have defects, but when we speak of our mother's defects we gloss over them, we love her as she is. And the Church also has her defects: but we love her just as a mother. Do we help her to be more beautiful, more authentic, more in harmony with the Lord?” 

Then the Holy Father goes on to describe the second way the Church is mother. He says, “A mother does not stop at just giving life; with great care she helps her children grow, gives them milk, feeds them, teaches them the way of life, accompanies them always with her care, with her affection, with her love, even when they are grown up. And in this she also knows to correct them, to forgive them and understand them. She knows how to be close to them in sickness and in suffering. In a word, a good mother helps her children to come of themselves, and not to remain comfortably under her motherly wings, like a brood of chicks under the wings of the broody hen. The Church like a good mother does the same thing: she accompanies our development by transmitting to us the Word of God, which is a light that directs the path of Christian life; she administers the Sacraments. She nourishes us with the Eucharist, she brings us the forgiveness of God through the Sacrament of Penance, she helps us in moments of sickness with the Anointing of the sick. The Church accompanies us throughout our entire life of faith, throughout the whole of our Christian life. We can then ask ourselves other questions: what is my relationship with the Church? Do I feel like she is my mother who helps me grow as a Christian? Do I participate in the life of the Church, do I feel part of it? Is my relationship a formal or a vital relationship?”

So Mother Church, gives us spiritual birth, and she rears us, that we may become the people God made us to be. But for what? Well, our second reading this weekend from the book of Revelation answers that question. Why?

We heard in John’s vision, this weekend, Mother Church’s children having reached their eternal destination. The “great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue” stand before the throne of God. These are the souls who have been born by mother Church, who have been nurtured by mother Church, who have walked as faithful sons and daughters of Mother Church, and who now have reached the maturity, the end, for which they were created, reconciliation with God in eternity. As the Early Church Fathers would say, we cannot have God as Father without the Church as our mother.

May we love our Mother the Church, allow ourselves to be nurtured and taught by her always, for she is Mater et Magistra--Mother and Teacher. May we be the best of children of Our Holy Mother the Church, that we may receive the eternal life the Lord suffered and died to obtain for us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.